May 13, 2026 (Vol. 20 No. 19) - OK, I admit it. I am thoroughly pissed at CBS. First, they caved into and settled a Trump lawsuit that he had no chance of winning. Then they screwed around with a 60 Minutes segment on the Trump administration's controversial deportation of undocumented - and occasionally documented - immigrants. Then, Bari Weiss turned the CBS Evening News into a "MAGA approved" broadcast. Of course, all of this comes on the heels of last fall's shocking announcement that it was cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, late-night TV's top-rated broadcast. Tomorrow night will be his final broadcast. I noted my displeasure at the time of Colbert's cancellation. Unfortunately, we've also seen other efforts at silencing late-night voices over at ABC. However, to their credit, Disney has recently shown some backbone in the face of threats from the Big Orange Turd. Still, I doubt that will stop him from the Commode Commander's late-night rants on antisocial media.

Back when I was a radio-television major at the University of Maryland - back when the earth was still cooling - I learned that broadcasting had a special place in American law. Operating under the premise that the airwaves belong to the public, the government could license broadcast radio and television stations, requiring that they operate in the public interest. However, with the introduction of new media, mainly the Internet, during the 1980s, the Reagan administration eliminated what was known as The Fairness Doctrine, which led to the explosion of conservative talk radio. It was also a period which saw the growth of a new class of media ownership, corporate types more interested in profits than the public interest. That arrangement worked for a while until Donald Trump chose to weaponize the government's regulatory authority to force less critical (if not more favorable) broadcast content.

For me, this trend harkens back to a Freedom Forum conference I attended in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1997. I wrote about it in February 2025. In that session, Russian journalists said they were nervous about their country's movement away from government-controlled media to that owned by oligarchs. To American ears, that sounded like backwards thinking. It was better to trust regulated corporations than to leave the media in the hands of unregulated (and potentially out-of-control) government. Twenty-nine years later in a Trumpian world where the government is run by oligarchs, it is virtually impossible to differentiate between the two positions. Media conglomerates run by the ultra-rich pay lip service to the concept of "public interest" in much the same manner that Fox News is "fair and balanced."

I cannot state this forcefully enough: Healthy and strong democracies depend upon an informed and enlightened citizenry. I would argue that in the current media environment, there is no such thing. As a result, the global standing of the United States has suffered from this absence. How else could a vulgar, fraudulent, misogynistic, seditious rapist pedophile become President of the United States? Yes, I am pissed at CBS. But I am more pissed at Donald Trump and his legion of sycophants and miscreants who first elected him and still give unwavering support to him despite his systematic destruction of America's greatness. (Yet another broken promise from the man who would be the MAGA King.) Assuming we still have fair elections this fall - and that is much more an open question than ever before - those may be our last chance to save us from ourselves. If we fail, then may God have mercy on our souls. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.

May 13, 2026 (Vol. 20 No. 18) - After years of constantly disparaging Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” we have more than ample evidence that Donnie Daydream is the one who has been asleep at the wheel. Who can blame him? I doubt he gets very much sleep when he sits on his golden toilet into the wee hours of the morning spewing hate on his poorly named “Truth Social” platform.

Late Monday night/Early Tuesday morning, our commode commander posted 50 mostly hateful lies about his political opponents. Trump’s frenetically false posts included attacks on former President Barack Obama, who he said had planned a “coup” against him and branded Obama as a “traitor.” No wonder Donnie Daydream fell asleep during the next day’s Oval Office event focusing on the nation’s declining birthrate. (Perhaps his day-napping is a defensive mechanism for him to avoid listening to some of the stupid things said by Dr. Oz and RFK, two of the dimmest bulbs in his Klown Kabinet.)

Don’t get me wrong, Trump asleep is preferable to Trump awake. It’s when his eyes (and mouth) are open that he does the most damage. Just this week, his administration:

• lied to the American people about the cost of his war-of-choice against Iran. The administration says it has cost taxpayers $29 billion. But the truth is that it is at least twice that amount.

• lied about the amount of damage the America offensive has done to Iran’s military capabilities. Trump & Company claimed that the Iranians are virtually defenseless as a result of American actions. However, our own intelligence assessments say Iran still has considerable defensive/offensive capabilities.

• continued to lie about the cost of Trump’s vanity ballroom. If you remember, Trump initially said that there would be no cost to the taxpayers. Then the price tag was $200 million. Then $250 million. Then $400 million. Now, congressional Republicans are pushing a $1 billion appropriation for a ballroom that an overwhelming majority of Americans do not want. Trump says it is “under budget.”

• defiled yet another place on the National Historic Registry, the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Trump literally called in his “pool guy” on a no-bid contract to change the pool’s color from a dark gray – which allows it the “reflect” – to standard swimming pool color. President Liesenhower said this atrocity would only cost $1.3 million. The Washington Post reports that the true cost will be closer to $15 million. I wonder if that cost will include beach cabanas.

• bilked 600,000 members of his own MAGA crowd who placed $100 deposits on golden Trump telephones, only the find out that that phones may never be produced and that the Trump Organization is under no legal obligation to return any money. (The lesson here is read the fine print.)

• slapped American taxpayers in the face. He told reporters that he doesn’t care about the financial strain on them created by his Iranian adventure. (It appears that the only thing that evokes empathy from Donnie Daydream is his ballroom.)

And today is only Wednesday. I shudder to think of the kind of trouble Trumplestiltskin may get into while he is in China. He may deal away Tiawan in exchange for a new Trump property in Beijing. Trump says he has “all of the cards” as he negotiates with China’s Xi. If he’d look closely, Trump will see he’s holding a handful of Jokers.

It is hardly an exaggeration that there’s not a day that goes by that our Dear Leader doesn’t commit an impeachable offense and the sycophantic sheep of the Republican caucus look the other way. That’s why Democratic voters cannot be asleep at the wheel this November. They need to GOTV – Get Out The Vote. Otherwise, American will continue to descend into Donnie Daydream’s nightmare.  That’s it for now. Fear the Turtle.